Happy 63rd birthday to J.D. Salinger’s classic novel.
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1. Since it was first published in 1951, more than 65 million copies of The Catcher in the Rye have been sold.
2. Around 250,000 copies of the book are sold each year, almost 685 per day.
3. The title The Catcher in the Rye derives from a mishearing of Scottish poet Robert Burns' "Comin' Thro' the Rye" by the book's narrator and protagonist, Holden Caulfield.
4. Caulfield was appearing in J.D. Salinger's short stories as early as 1941, ten years before the book's publication.
5. In November 1941, Salinger sold the story "Slight Rebellion Off Madison", which featured Holden Caulfield, to The New Yorker, but it was not published until 21 December, 1946, because of World War II.
6. The story "I'm Crazy", which was published in the 22 December, 1945, issue of Collier's, contained material that was later used in The Catcher in the Rye.
7. A 90-page manuscript about Holden Caulfield was accepted by The New Yorker for publication in 1946, but was later withdrawn by Salinger.
8. Salinger later offered excerpts of The Catcher in the Rye to The New Yorker, but the editors did not run any of it because they didn't think Holden Caulfield was believable.
9. While Caulfield speaks poorly of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms in Catcher, Salinger actually maintained a personal correspondence with Hemingway and the two held a mutual respect for one another.
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10. The Catcher in the Rye was originally banned in many schools across the US. Administrators and parents believed that Caulfield's act of engaging a prostitute was completely immoral, and also objected to the vulgarity of the language used by the character.
11. In 1957, Australian customs seized a shipment of the novels that had been presented to the government as a gift from the US ambassador. The books were later released, but the Australian customs maintained that the obscene language and actions depicted in the book were not suitable for adolescents.
12. In 1960, a teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was fired for assigning the novel in class; he was later reinstated.
13. In 1963, a delegation of parents of high-school students in Columbus, Ohio, asked the school board to ban The Catcher in the Rye for being 'anti-white'."
14. In 1977, parents in Pittsgrove Township, New Jersey, challenged the assignment of the novel in a literature class. They charged that the book included "filthy and profane" language that promoted premarital sex, homosexuality, and perversion, as claimed that the book was "explicitly pornographic" and "immoral".
15. Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the US.
16. In 1981, it was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools in the United States.
17. And it is still proving controversial. It was the tenth most frequently challenged book in US schools from 1990 to 1999. More recently, it made the top 10 in 2001, 2005, and again in 2009.
18. Reasons cited for challenging or banning the book include: Caulfield's "rebellious views", its "785 uses of profanity", that it is "part of a Communist plot", that it is "unacceptable", "obscene", and "undermines morality", that it depicts premarital sex, alcohol abuse, and prostitution, and that it "contains lurid passages about sex", details the main character's "sexual exploits", is "centred around negative activity", and contains "vulgar words".
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